A blog devoted mainly to questions of authenticity in popular music, frequently featuring MP3's of uncommon--and uncommonly good--songs. Hosted by Yuval Taylor and Hugh Barker, authors of Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music (Norton, 2007).

July 20, 2007

Faked Incompetence

Camille Saint-Saens wrote Le carnaval des animaux in 1886, but it wasn’t published until
1922, the year after his death; he felt it would tarnish his reputation as a “serious”
composer. He was right: it did. I consider it the best thing he ever wrote,
though I do have a soft spot for his Third Symphony too. At any rate, the
eleventh movement of the Carnaval is
entitled “Pianistes” (the recording
posted here features Martha Argerich and Nelson Freire on pianos and a group of
nine other players including Gidon Kremer on violin). In the score,
Saint-Saens put asterisks by the “1er piano” and “2d piano” indications, and
footnoted them as follows: “Les exécutants devront imiter le jeu d’un débutant et
sa gaucherie” (or, in English, “The pianists should imitate the hesitant style
and awkwardness of a beginner”). In other words, Saint-Saens was asking them to
fake incompetence. (In this wonderful recording, the rest of the orchestra
follows suit.)

In Shakey, Jimmy
McDonough’s brilliant biography of Neil Young, Young asks Nils Lofgren to play
piano on the After the Gold Rush sessions.
“I can’t play piano,” Lofgren says. Young responds, “Perfect. That’s the sound I was looking for.” This happens over and
over again--Young wants incompetence. Real incompetence is, of course, best, but
how real is it if he deliberately tries to have his musicians (and himself) be as
incompetent? Incompetence makes it
sound realer, Young thinks. About Tonight’s
the Night, Young comments, “They didn’t even know the song--what could be
better?”

Bob Dylan has always done the same thing. He prefers the first
take, mistakes and all, to a more polished performance. Again, he’s not necessarily
faking his incompetence, but leaving mistakes in on purpose when it’s easy to
take them out amounts to pretty much the same thing.

Compare this to Elvis Presley’s method in 1956, doing take
after take after take of every song until it was exactly the way he wanted it. The music sounded no less spontaneous
and full of energy for all that.

If you have any suggestions for other instances of faked
incompetence, please leave a comment below.

Oh, and please excuse the hiatus between this and the last
few entries--I’ve been in Florida and Chiapas (Mexico),
without access to computers or recorded music. I hope to post something about Chiapanecan music soon.

I'm afraid I haven't heard that guitar solo. But I'll take your word for it, Douglas. And thanks for specifying the Dylan example--I was too tired to look through all my Clinton Heylin books last night.

Yes indeed. The Stranglers are another good example for exactly the same reason, and one which we discuss in passing in the book (p.290). I should have brought up the business of faking incompetence in punk rock--it's rife with such examples.

Young is not looking for incompetence when he places Lofgrin at the piano. He's hoping Lofgrin will play something different, something pianist would not play.
He's not looking for authenticity or incompetence, he looking for something creative and unique.

You're right that he's looking for something new, something a pianist would not play. But he's also looking for incompetence and authenticity. Young's entire aesthetic for certain recordings, especially Tonight's the Night, was predicated on avoiding anything that sounded professional. Don't get me wrong, though--I'm a huge Neil Young fan.

I checked out your website, by the way, and in my opinion Blind Joe Death is a clever fabrication of Fahey's. Do you think he really existed? Fahey was a master at faking things.

Actually, I am not the authentic Blind Joe Death, I just play him in blog comments.

I've entered my real website in the URL box.
If you visit you'll see why I use the name BlindJoeDeath.

Yes, Blind Joe Death was sheer fabrication. The question is did Fahey use it as a joke or as a means to capture authenticity? Probably both.

I’m still not convinced that Young is seeking incompetence as opposed to the creative spark of found in discovery. He was looking for the sound that matched the theme of Tonight’s the Night, clearly the shine and polish of Harvest wound not be appropriate.
You can't make a film noir in Technicolor.

The analogy isn't precise enough. Jim Jarmusch is not faking incompetence when he makes black-and-white films, even though Technicolor is widely available. Nor is Lou Barlow faking it when he plays (or used to play) a beat-up $20 guitar rather than a state-of-the-art one. Using inferior equipment is a different matter from asking your band to deliberately refrain from playing to the best of their ability. Don't get me wrong--Tonight's the Night is one of my favorite records of all time, and I wouldn't change a note on it. I just think it's important to recognize that there's a degree of deliberate perversity involved.

Incompetence or superstition?
Producer Willie Dixon was famed for making certian that there was a musical clam in every track he signed off on and it drove his musicians nuts. His superstition was that if the track was "perfect" it wouldn't be a hit, so he would make his bands play it over and over again until they made a mistake, then that was the take he would print. Maybe like the Native American weavers who leave a purposefull flaw in a rug to allow evil spirits to pass by. Or maybe he was a nut job, who can say?

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